Happy 2010.

I welcomed the New Year with a half glass of wine (verdict: I don't feel guilty, but I did get the best sleep yet this pregnancy) and a New Year's day facial with my mom.

The facialist, as it turns out, was a girl I went to high school with. I'm pretty sure her friends hated my friends, and vice versa, and I can't really remember why exactly except that there might have been a shared boyfriend between our two groups and I think there might have been some drunken words slung over this fact in the past. But either way, I knew the second I saw her face that I was in for an awkward hour of forced conversation. We both tiptoed around how we knew each other ("You went to my high school, didn't you?") and did a pretty swell job at avoiding the awkwardness. But, as it turns out, she had a daughter a year ago, and once we got on that subject it gave us something to fill the void.

It's times like these I realize just how common of an experience childbirth and motherhood is. Going through it, it's so easy to convince yourself that you are the only one, to forget that the back pain and gassiness and cramps are part of the deepest, most important force in the world. Life. No matter how divine or shitty the experience, it's not one made just for you. You're part of the grand scheme and the infinite chain of women who have done it before and will do it later, even that girl from your high school who slept with your friend's boyfriend.

It's a comforting thought. But to someone like me who can be a selfish, petulant child, it can also be sort of annoying when you just want to claim it as your own. (One of my parents' favorite anecdotes from my childhood is that I loved to walk around as a toddler declaring everything as mine. My grandpa once said something about liking Kentucky, where we lived at the time, and I responded "My 'Tucky!" in all seriousness. He needed my permission to like it first.)

All I know is that my daughter will be born this year, along with billions of other babies. But she'll always look back at 2010 as the year in which she was created, just like I look at 1986 and claim it as my own.